‘I’ve Laughed, Cried, and Danced in Writers’ Rooms.’ Creative Writing alumna working as screenwriter in Los Angeles
C
hikodili Agwuna wanted to be a writer from the time she was in elementary school, but it was in a fiction writing class at Penn State Behrend that she learned what kind of writer she wanted to be. “I had written a short story about a very sad topic, but the writing was pretty funny,” said Agwuna, a 2015 Creative Writing alumna. “My classmates talked about how visual it was, and I realized that whenever 14
I wrote a story, I’d imagine it as a movie. That’s when I decided to make screenwriting my goal.” She started reading scripts and watching shows, taking note of how stories evolved from page to screen. Two favorites: Game of Thrones and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. “Game of Thrones really helped me understand how to write action scenes in a way that made it easy to visualize and Brooklyn Nine-Nine helped me learn how to structure a comedic script,” she said. A writing credit on a 2021 episode
of the Netflix animated comedy series Tuca & Bertie made it clear Agwuna had achieved what she set out to do. “That was a special accomplishment for me because I’m not a staff writer yet,” she said. “I love that show and everyone who works on it. It was a dream to get a cowrite with Shauna McGarry in season two and to write on my own for the upcoming third season.” Agwuna stands out. She always has. She was an active and well-known student at Behrend, and former professors remember her well.
